The Edge of Dark Page 18

  ‘It’s not unlikely, is it?’

  Nick’s mouth turned down as he considered. ‘It’s not impossible,’ he allowed, ‘but, Roz, I don’t think you’re mentally ill. You’re functioning perfectly normally.’

  ‘It’s not normal to think you’re living in the sixteenth century!’

  ‘Okay,’ he said calmly, ‘you’re functioning normally most of the time. You’re eating, sleeping, working. You’re communicating clearly with other people. You’re not withdrawn. If it wasn’t for these episodes as Jane, you wouldn’t think you were ill, would you?’

  ‘But if I’m not hallucinating, what’s happening to me?’ Roz could hear the precarious control in her voice, and Nick obviously heard it too. He put an arm around her and drew her close.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he admitted. ‘I don’t think you’re ill, but obviously something’s wrong. The mind is a very powerful thing. I just wonder if this is all some bizarre way of dealing with the trauma from when you were a child.’

  ‘Or?’ Roz said, challenging him to come up with another suggestion, the one neither of them wanted to face.

  ‘Or you’re possessed,’ said Nick. ‘By the ghost of a decent woman who lived here a few hundred years ago.’

  They stared at each other solemnly for a long moment, and then they both broke into shaky laughter. ‘I can’t believe we’re even talking about being possessed!’ said Roz. Everything felt so normal, so real, when Nick was there. The walls were solid, the floor fixed. The Ikea furniture looked as if it had never been the setting for anything more remarkable than an evening watching television.

  ‘I know.’ Nick pushed a hand through his hair. ‘It does seem incredible, and yet . . . it’s happening. And the last time you . . . were Jane . . . was Monday?’

  Roz nodded, but she wasn’t foolish enough to hope that it was over. All week when she had been walking around York, she had been aware of a different world flickering at the edges of her vision. A gowned figure would flit past, only to vanish when she turned her head sharply to look. Or she’d be walking along and it would seem to her that the streets were crowding in behind her, that if she stopped and looked over her shoulder, she would see the stalls built out into the road, the goodwives sitting in the doorways, a pig snouting along a gutter, or a cart laden with cabbages. Sometimes she tried to catch it out, whipping round, but everything was just as it should be. Only her heart was kicking hard and high in her throat.

  She felt peeled, as if all her senses were raw and so highly attuned that they were reaching into the world that existed like a shimmer behind her own, so that she could smell the dray horse, smell the timber and the dung and the wood and the wet straw. She could hear the clamour and the clatter of the workshops, the barking dogs and the laughing women and the quarrelling men. And sometimes it seemed that her comfortable tops would shrink against her, pulled tight by the laces of a bodice, and she had to put up a hand against the scratchiness of a ruff that wasn’t there.

  Nick could obviously see the hesitation in her face. ‘Look,’ he said, tightening his arm around her, ‘let’s take this one step at a time. Why don’t you go and see Rita as we agreed next time you’re in London? If there isn’t a psychological explanation, we can think about going down the medical route or talking to a priest.’

  Roz swallowed. ‘You mean exorcism?’

  ‘Well, it seems to work in films.’

  ‘I hope I don’t start projectile vomiting,’ she said in a feeble attempt at a joke.

  ‘Don’t worry, the moment your head starts spinning on your shoulders, I’ll be straight off to google the nearest exorcist.’ Nick’s expression sobered. ‘It’ll be okay, Roz, I promise. I’m glad you told me.’

  She smiled waveringly back at him. ‘Me too.’

  Roz hadn’t realized quite how frightened she had been until she had confided in Nick, but now that she had, everything felt more manageable, and her spirits had lifted as they headed out to Holme Hall.

  She had hired a car that morning, and in spite of the damp start, it had been a beautiful drive out through the Wolds. She liked to drive, and, thank God, Nick wasn’t one of those men who thought their masculinity was in doubt if they were driven by a woman.

  It was good to get out of the city. In late September, the hedgerows were still green, but the countryside had a faintly tired and tattered feel after the summer and the leaves were just starting to turn.

  She took her eyes off the road to glance at Nick, aware of the pleasant hum in her blood as she remembered the night before, and her mouth curved.

  ‘What?’ said Nick, becoming aware of her gaze.

  ‘Nothing. I’m just grateful to you for coming this weekend.’

  ‘Oh, well, I don’t want you getting seduced into the landed gentry,’ he said and she laughed and patted his thigh.

  ‘Don’t worry, I’m not into the huntin’-fishin’-shootin’ type.’

  ‘Just as well,’ he pretended to growl.

  Lime trees lined the avenue, and on either side stretched lush parkland dotted with oaks and spreading chestnuts. Fat cows browsed amongst a herd of fluffy sheep. Horses cropped the green grass.

  ‘It’s all very Pride and Prejudice, isn’t it?’ said Nick. ‘Do you think we’ll meet Mr Darcy bowling along in a carriage?’

  Roz didn’t answer. She was frowning at the tarmacked avenue. It looked so strange, unlike the rough and jolting track they had been travelling on for what felt like days. Juliana had spent the entire journey complaining of nausea at the lurch and sway of the carriage, in spite of the fact that she had insisted on her father’s new coach. Jane would rather have ridden like Annis, who had flatly refused to get inside.

  ‘The back of a cart or the rump of a horse is good enough for me,’ she had said firmly. She was having nothing to do with carriages. They were the work of the Devil, newfangled monstrosities that took over the calseys and blocked the streets so that nobody could get by without sucking in their breath and squeezing between carriage and stall if they were lucky. It was bad enough with all the carts in the city, but gentry folk and their fancy coaches were a curse in Annis’s view. And who would want to be shut up inside the belly of one for hours on end, anyway?

  Not Jane, for certain. Surely they must get there soon? The lurch of the coach over the ruts in the track and the smell of wood and leather mingled with Juliana’s pomander, stifling in the enclosed space, was making her feel as sick as her sister, and she had not the excuse of being with child.

  It was six weeks since Jane had abased herself before her husband. If anything, Robert was even more uncomfortable with her now, and avoided her eyes. When she had suggested taking her sister to the country for the summer, she could see the relief in his face.

  ‘Send word if you are with child,’ he’d said.

  Her flowers had come down three weeks later, but Robert didn’t know that. He knew nothing of Jane’s body. He had finally succeeded in bending Jane over his desk, pushing into her from behind as he called for his mamma, and releasing a trickle of seed after a few ineffectual pumps. Jane just hoped it would be enough to convince him she might have conceived.

  It was all going to plan. Jane had kept her eyes lowered to hide her triumph. The thought of leaving the stifling house in Micklegate and spending the summer without her husband or Margaret left her giddy with relief. And, God willing, there would be an heir for the Holmwoods at the end of it. A boy would ensure her position, but even a girl would be a child to love.

  All would be well if only they could get out of this cursed coach!

  She shifted forward to peer out of the window. More woods. ‘I hope we get there soon,’ she sighed.

  ‘We’re almost there.’

  How strange. Juliana’s voice had deepened in surprise. She sounded almost like –

  Nick.

  Roz sucked in a breath and slammed her foot on the brake. The car lurched to a stop in the middle of the avenue and she dropped her head onto the steering w
heel.

  ‘Hey.’ Nick put a hand on her shoulder in concern. ‘Roz, what’s the matter?’

  Roz couldn’t answer immediately. Her mind was ringing with alarm. How could Jane have followed her here, in the car?

  Drawing a shuddering breath, she sat up and tipped her head back against the seat. ‘Sorry,’ she said.

  ‘That was it, wasn’t it?’ Nick’s voice changed and she nodded miserably.

  ‘Roz, this is serious. We should have thought of this. What if you’d been driving on a main road with other traffic? You could have been killed.’

  ‘I know. I never thought Jane would be able to follow me here, but of course she came to Holme Hall too.’

  ‘I think we should go back to London right now,’ said Nick, but Roz set her mouth stubbornly.

  ‘No. We’ve come this far, we may as well go on. I’ll be prepared now. You can see that when I go back it only lasts seconds in this time, so you can cover for me if necessary.’ She unbuckled her seatbelt. ‘But you’d better drive from now on.’

  They changed places and continued up the drive, crunching to a halt on a circle of immaculately maintained gravel in front of a sprawling Jacobean mansion. Nick whistled. ‘Your boss isn’t short of a bob or two, is he?’

  Adrian came out onto the steps to meet them wearing cords and a checked shirt, very much the country gentleman. Roz glanced at Nick’s jeans and faded long-sleeved T-shirt. She had a feeling he wasn’t going to fit in.

  But Nick wasn’t a man to be thrown by finding himself out of place, and they brushed through lunch and an afternoon’s walk without any faux pas. Adrian showed them all proudly round the house. ‘This is one of the best-preserved examples of an early Jacobean house in the country,’ he told them as they trailed politely after him up the magnificent staircase and into an impressively long gallery. A row of bay windows looked out over the knot garden and the estate beyond, while the other wall was covered in portraits.

  ‘And here is Sir Geoffrey himself.’ Adrian gestured up at the painting hung in the centre of the gallery. It was a full-length version of the portrait Roz had seen in his office in York. Dressed in a gorgeously embroidered doublet and white stockings and hose, Sir Geoffrey had a dashing scarlet cloak swinging from one shoulder. Above the wide ruff, he looked out from the canvas with the same malevolent black eyes. When Roz’s gaze met them, an icy finger seemed to touch the nape of her neck, making her back twitch uncontrollably. She felt sick and a little giddy as she averted her head.

  ‘What’s that on the table beside him?’ Nick went right up to the painting to peer more closely at the detail and Roz had to bite down on the urge to shout at him to step back, that he was too close. She could have sworn Sir Geoffrey was watching him derisively, a sneer hovering around his thin lips.

  ‘It’s a tinderbox,’ Adrian was saying, pointing it out to the others, who crowded round, apparently unperturbed by Sir Geoffrey’s malign gaze. ‘Rather an odd thing for him to be painted with, I agree, but he seems to have been a singular character. A man ahead of his time, I always feel. It was Sir Geoffrey who built the house we see today. Tragically, the older Holme Hall burned to the ground just after he attained his majority. Legend has it that his grandmother was killed in the fire,’ Adrian went on, regarding his ancestor admiringly. ‘She’s even said to haunt the Hall today!’ He twinkled at the stir of interest. ‘I can’t say I’ve ever seen her, but a ghost in an old house like this is almost de rigueur, isn’t it?’ he said, and his guests all laughed obligingly.

  Roz was glad when they moved on, but as Adrian led them out of the gallery, she could feel Sir Geoffrey’s gaze following her, and when she glanced over her shoulder, almost unwillingly, she was certain that his cruel almost-smile had deepened. Her heart jerked unpleasantly, but the chief executive of one of York’s biggest companies was standing back so that she could go ahead of him, and when Roz glanced again, it was just a portrait in an ornate frame, hanging motionless on the gallery wall.

  As promised, the other guests were pretty standard representatives of Yorkshire’s wealthy and influential and over lunch the air in the grand dining room positively reeked of pomposity. Roz had to be careful not to catch Nick’s eye on several occasions, but she had to admit that everyone was friendly enough.

  Everyone except Helen, who had been waiting in the hall with a clipboard when they arrived. ‘I’m just here to help Sir Adrian,’ she had said coldly when Roz greeted her and pretended to be pleased that she was a fellow guest.

  ‘Who was that stone-faced female who showed us to the room?’ Nick shouted through into the en suite bathroom that evening as they got ready for dinner.

  Roz groaned. ‘That was Adrian’s PA, Helen.’ She turned on the shower and put a hand underneath to test for temperature.

  ‘She doesn’t like you very much, does she?’ Nick appeared in the doorway, hooking his T-shirt over his head.

  ‘No,’ said Roz with a sigh. ‘I think she’s afraid I’m going to take advantage of Adrian, who obviously can’t see that she’s in love with him.’

  ‘He’s a strange guy, isn’t he? One of those people who can only cope with modern life by pretending that they’re still living in a different century.’

  ‘I’d wondered why he wasn’t married, but he told me this afternoon that he’s been engaged twice and he’s called it off both times.’

  ‘Yes, I heard that too. How, when it came down to it, he couldn’t contemplate facing either of them over a breakfast table for the rest of his life. All protesting a little too much if you ask me.’

  ‘Funny, though, that someone so obsessed with his family’s history wouldn’t be keen to pass on the name,’ she commented as she stripped off her clothes. She couldn’t help thinking about Robert, and his desperation to have a son. ‘I’d have thought it would be worth a bit of a chat over tea and toast to have an heir.’

  ‘Maybe the thought of all that intimacy is too much for him,’ said Nick. ‘Not everyone wants kids.’

  His words fell into an abrupt silence. To Roz it rang with everything he himself had said in the past. It’s too soon. We don’t need a baby to complete us. Kids are a lot of work. I’m not sure I’m ready to be a father yet. It wouldn’t be the end of the world if we didn’t have children.

  ‘No,’ she said without looking at him as she pulled open the shower door. She wished they hadn’t picked at that particular scab. ‘No, they don’t, do they?’

  ‘Hush now.’ Jane wiped Juliana’s forehead and winced as her sister screamed again. She looked across the birthing stool at the midwife. ‘Should it be taking this long?’

  ‘It takes as long as it takes,’ snapped the midwife, but Jane thought her eyes were worried. ‘Come on, lass,’ she said to Juliana. ‘One more little push.’

  ‘I can’t . . . I can’t . . .’ Juliana sobbed and screamed. She had been walking very slowly with Jane in the garden when her waters broke. The midwife had advised staying in the chamber and sealing it up tight, but Juliana had been fretful and bored and Jane hadn’t thought a little air would do any harm. She couldn’t remember the last time it had rained. The earth was cracked and grey, and the crops were shrivelling in the fields. A hazy heat lay over the Wolds like a suffocating blanket. It was too hot to sleep, too hot to move, too hot to breathe.

  All morning they had been watching clouds boiling on the horizon, where the air grew dark and heavy. Jane longed for the storm to break, for the rain to fall and a breeze to stir the thick air, but it had sulked obstinately in the distance.

  Now Jane wished she had made Juliana stay where she was. Perhaps if she had kept her still and safe in this room, her sister might not be in such agony. She had hurried Juliana back to the chamber as quickly as she could and Annis had sent one of the servants off to fetch the midwife. Between them they had coaxed Juliana into the bed and stoked up the fire. The room was stifling now and sweat was trickling between Jane’s breasts and on the inside of her thighs.

  She could
n’t help thinking of Ellen, whose labour had at least been quick. Juliana had been screaming with pain for hours now, and she was getting weaker.

  ‘Is there anything else we can give her?’ she asked the midwife in a low voice. They had rubbed almond oil on Juliana’s swollen belly and given her buttered eggs to eat. A woman in the village had given birth recently and the midwife sent for four spoonfuls of her milk which Juliana had been cajoled into drinking, but none of it was helping. ‘I have some poppy seeds in my still room. I could make a syrup to ease her pain.’

  But the midwife shook her head. ‘She needs to stay awake to push.’ She was feeling Juliana’s stomach, her face grave. ‘The babe is the wrong way round,’ she said to Jane in an undertone. ‘I will have to try and turn it.’

  Jane exchanged a look with Annis. Everything had gone well so far. Juliana had been bored and petulant these last few months, but she had understood the need for no visitors. For Jane, it had been a peaceful interlude. She organized the house, and tended the garden, and fed Juliana meals to tempt her appetite.

  A few servants left at Holme Hall year round were country folk. ‘Don’t worry about them,’ Annis had said when Jane fretted that they might tell the Holmwoods that it had not been Jane who had been growing fat and cumbersome. ‘When will they ever have conversation with either of them? They never come here anyways. We’ll send word that there is sickness here for a month or two and that will keep the master away, even if he was minded to see his child. He won’t be able to tell the difference between a baby that is two months old and one that is four months, even if he cared. ‘Sides, the servants here like having you as their mistress. They’ll keep your counsel.’

  At first the midwife hadn’t been happy about Jane and Annis as companions to Juliana. Neither of them had had a child, she’d said, able to tell apparently just by looking at them. They would be no use to her.